How MOD Pizza is removing barriers to employment

MOD Pizza, a quick-service restaurant chain with over 500 locations, made the decision to eliminate background checks for entry-level roles, CHRO Dayna Eberhardt explained to the audience at this year’s HR Retail conference in Seattle.

“We were doing tens of thousands of background checks, [spending] tens of thousands of dollars, and less than 0.04% had an impact rate coming back,” she told the crowd. “We’re spending all this money, creating stress, not just for our team…but for those individuals applying. We want to make it as easy as possible to come and join us.”

The decision is part of a larger effort that Eberhardt said grew organically, by having an inclusive and open culture that has led to a focus on working with justice-involved individuals and those with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).

“We hired our first justice-involved employee many years ago,” Eberhardt said. “He now has a job in our support center and has grown his career over time and reacquainted with his family. And he really taught us a lot about this population.”

She adds that MOD’s goal is “to be the leading employer of individuals who face barriers to employment.”

“This could be anything from homelessness, incarceration, reform incarceration, addiction, transportation, childcare, all of those things that many of us in the US face,” she explained, adding that “40% of that population self-discloses that they face barriers.”

The company’s four pillars for its approach to the in-store employee experience are: opportunity, stability, mobility, and advocacy.

As an example of how they support employees’ stability, MOD offers an employee assistance fund and also has a program to help people expunge parts of their criminal record. The company pays store employees above minimum wage and also offers benefits for employees working more than 30 hours per week.

“Once you find stability, you start to dream a little bit about what’s next,” Eberhardt said, “and that’s mobility.”

She told the story of one store employee who was insecure about working while wearing an ankle brace because she was under house arrest. On her first day, she met someone else at the store in the same situation, and said it made her feel at home.

That woman is now a general manager of a store and is working on her master’s degree. MOD began offering tuition-free college to employees in December.

“Under this  [mobility] column, we’re really talking about things like bachelor’s degrees, high school completion, we’re talking about career development, and growth within the company, outside the company,” Eberhardt said.

MOD’s fourth pillar is advocacy. The company is a member of the Workforce and Justice Alliance, lets employees take time off to vote, and advocates for issues that its employees care about through robust donation programs, and is also starting a coalition of its own focused around that issue.

“These individuals with IDD, or justice involvement, have a higher rate of retention, higher promotion rate, and a higher engagement rate across the board, compared to our non-self disclosed [population],” Eberhardt said. “That’s very rewarding for us, but also providing to populations that are underserved.”—AK